Morgan, now 21, says she was nervous only once, at a debut in Nutcracker, and just for a moment. What role could she have been dreading? Sugar Plum, with its incessant pointework that can drain a ballerina of all charm? Dewdrop, with its panoply of technical demands? “Marzipan,” she says. The leader of those panpipe-playing shepherdesses in stiff, ungainly skirts who tosses off a couple of gargouillades! (Go ahead and laugh; everybody else does.)

I think Katie is on to something about Marzipan. It's the role I always look to to see who's cast (as a possible up and comer) and who succeeds in it (not that many). And about that "ungainly skirt," I've heard tell that these are still the originals and are constantly being repaired because they would be too costly to replace. By the way, count me in to see Katie's Aurora. I'm looking forward to her second one on Saturday evening.

Marzipan is the hardest role in Balanchine's "The Nutcracker", in my opinion. It is long, intricate, technically difficult, yet must come across like finely spun sugar. And it comes after two, shorter, athletic pieces for a male lead, Tea and the extraordinary Candy Cane, after which its delicacies are often not appreciated by an audience on an adrenaline rush.